Better Health: It’s Less Complicated Than You Think

As gnolls.org has become more and more widely read, I am receiving more and more questions from my readers in comments, on the forums, and over email—and a significant number of them boil down to “I have [a list of problems], what should I eat?”

First, let me be absolutely clear: I am not complaining! I work very hard every week to write articles that are not only worth your time—they’re worth forwarding to others using the social media buttons at the end. I’m glad you’re here.

However, I need to correct a common misconception. And though this article is mostly addressed to those new to paleo or the paleo-curious, it’s worth all of our time to briefly remind ourselves of a basic truth.

Getting Lost On The Path To Better Health

Most of modern medicine treats physical and mental dysfunctions as medication deficiencies.

Acid reflux? You’ve got a proton pump inhibitor deficiency.

Can’t sleep? A classic sign of Ambien deficiency.

Insulin-resistant? Your metformin intake is inadequate.

Depressed? Clearly your blood levels of Prozac are too low.

High blood pressure? That’s textbook—you’re Toprol-deficient.

Obese? Well…actually, we haven’t found a medication that doesn’t make you crap your pants. Maybe you should do some jumping jacks or something.

Even “alternative medicine” takes this approach, telling us we’re deficient in everything from crushed crab shells to olive leaf extract.

According to the labels, every one of these bottles is absolutely necessary for our good health. It's best not to ask how Paleolithic humans survived without them.

Of course this is baloney, designed to sell us pills. But this pervasive approach has a more subtle destructive effect on our thinking: it lulls us into applying the same fallacious analysis to our dietary needs. Whatever’s wrong with us, there must be an individual dietary prescription to fix it. Some magical balance of protein to fat to carbs, some obscure rainforest fruit rich in antiphytocatopolyresistophenolins, a nut butter that won’t make us fat…

Yes, we all want to believe that we’re all beautiful and unique snowflakes, that each of us deserves a personalized fitness plan, our very own roadmap to better health. Even the paleo community falls victim to the weak version of this fallacy, which is throwing up our hands and saying “Since we don’t understand everything, hey, whatever works for you.”

Unless you have one of a few rare and specific conditions like phenylketonuria (for which you were either tested at birth or died of the complications) or seizures (for which ketogenic diets are often appropriate), it’s highly unlikely that eating a functional paleo diet will cause anything to get worse—and it’s highly likely that you will enjoy improved health, relief of some or all symptoms, improved body composition, and higher energy levels after the period of adjustment required by any major dietary change.

At this point it is important to note the disclaimer I’ve had on the left sidebar for some time:

• Your life and health are your own responsibility.
• Your decisions to act (or not act) based on information or advice anyone provides you—including me—are your own responsibility.

Furthermore, if you ask me “What should I do about my GERD/insulin resistance/recurring rashes/IBS/40 remaining pounds of fat”, the first thing I’m going to ask you is “How many of the steps from Eat Like A Predator have you taken?” If you’re still eating gluten grains, cooking with seed oils, consuming packaged foods (especially those labeled “heart-healthy” or “low-carb”), or drinking soda, my first advice will be “Then stop that.”

Occasional cheating is a different matter…I don’t want to encourage orthorexia by blaming everything on half a brownie you had three weeks ago. But you need to be honest about whether you’re really just cheating, or whether you haven’t fully committed to change.

Conclusion: Better Health Is Less Complicated Than You Think

It’s very profitable to make better health seem like a complex undertaking. If we view “health” as an individual prescription difficult to follow, nearly impossible to maintain, and only dispensed by authority figures, we’ll become dependent on the continual assistance of others—and their pills—and we’ll be forever running in circles chasing the next diabetes drug or magical rainforest antioxidant extract.

Don’t believe the hype. Our ancestors survived, thrived, and multiplied for millions of years, using only their wits and sharp rocks. Humans are not born with medication deficiencies—nor are we metabolically dependent on chemicals extracted at great cost from plants that only fruit or flower seasonally in one small region we didn’t even inhabit until perhaps 11,000 years ago.

No, eating like a predator will not fix every problem. (For instance, infections require antibiotics, antifungals, or anthelmintics…and if your beta cells are gone, you need exogenous insulin.) Neither will it fix your problems overnight: damage done over decades won’t heal fully in days, and some damage may be permanent. But as Dr. Doug McGuff once said about medical testing:

“If the number is bad, eat healthy.
If the number is good, eat healthy.”

You may well be a beautiful and unique snowflake—but you’re a human animal, just like everyone else, and your path to health begins just like everyone else’s.

Live in freedom, live in beauty.

JS

Postscript: Your questions are welcome! There is much to discuss, and plenty of room for optimization once you’re following the basic plan.

Excellent article! We need to have a more nutrition-based method of practicing medicine. I truly believe that our physicians ought to take a full nutrition course (NOT funded by the USDA or other agency.)
They should be required to see the interaction of our foods and medicines in a synergistic way, just like the herbal healers of yore. If a healer back then prescribed a leaf to cure an ail, and nothing happened, or it got worse, they would be run out of town.

My doctor says he had a week of nutrition in college. I gave him a copy of “Good Calories, Bad Calories”. He is reading it and asking ME questions. I suggested I start charging HIM. I emailed him a list of must read books, mostly from speakers at the Ancestral Health Symposium. I can always hope he turns from his evil pill pushing ways. I am not deficient in ibuprofen, virepimil, albuterol, benadryl, trazidone, and the host of other meds I am no longer on since I began this Paleo journey Memorial Day of this year.

My first year of paleo was accompanied by living on the MDA forum, full of angst about what is “right.” Did the usual looking for low carb alternatives to bread, pancakes, etc.

Finally just settled into “Mostly Paleo,” not sweating the natural carb sources – in moderation – and accepting the occasional bun with a Fourth of July hot dog. Made life so much easier.

The belief that perfection is to be found in a product or a bottle is a result of our cultural mythologies. That we will progress in knowledge, that science will prevail, that as consumers we shall overcome. Billions of dollars a year are placed in the offering plate of that religion.

Another problem with pop-a-pill mentality is that it trains you to focus on details, sometimes completely missing the forest for the trees. In the conventional medicine the classic example is a drug for the side effect of another drug. Ridiculous but practiced on a daily basis.
However many people go into Paleo with the same mentality chasing numbers and looking for finite answers. Drilled and schooled by years of pharma, media and pop culture we still demand the instant gratification. You know what? It takes a looong time to correct metabolic issues, lose weight, manage (?cure) autoimmunity and gastrointestinal disorders.
Real food: just eat it and get on with your life.

The statements concerning illness and big-pharma's approach are hilarious, but absolutely true – you can almost hear your family Doctor saying those things. As for alternative medicine, well the situation is just the same yet we often think where conventional medicine has failed, alternative medicine might hold the answer rather than simply restoring our lives to a normality for human healthiness.

Illness falls into two categories – transient illness, like a cold, and long-term illness which is almost always lifestyle related.

'Eat Like a Predator' is a fundamentally brilliant work. Fundamentally right and absolutely the answer to illness – illness is a deviation from healthiness; healthiness is a normal state of being, maintained by eating right, working right, playing right and resting right.

As Anastasia summarised: Real food: just eat it and get on with your life.

One of my co-workers is a man in his early 60s; his wife has a plethora of health issues – high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, bad knees, etc. The woman takes so many pills she rattles when she walks.

Recently, she has begun to suffer from swollen lips and gums – the doctor has tried several medications, non of which have alleviated the inflammation. Finally, he put her on an elimination diet – and told her to stop eating fruit. Not grains or vegetable oils or soy or other inflammatory foods, but fruit.

It’s not working, so next he’s going to have her give up dairy – but that’s okay, she informed me Sunday, because while she’ll miss real butter they’ve got those margarines made with vegetable oil. *rolls eyes*

Her husband, in the meantime, has told me she is miserable on this new elimination diet because she is always hungry (it might be important to note that she eats fruit all day long or else her blood sugar will go too low). When I suggested she eat more fat, he snapped at me, “She CAN’T – she doesn’t like meat that much. The one hot dog she ate last night (wrapped in a white bread bun, by the way) was all the meat she ate all day because that was all the meat she wanted.”

Looks like the current approach to treating medical conditions is as flowed as the economical ideas in former Soviet Union.Many years ago the professor who taught us a Systems analysis in university explained why it was impossible for socialistic economy to work – because the Economy is a complex system and in complex systems hard regulation causes chaos. It should be on self-regulation. Other examples of complex system are things like climate, human body, eco-systems. Micro-management creates chaos in a complex system every time without failing.

Hit it right on the seams and knocked it out of the park JS. I've had this mentality practically my whole life.

I hated going to doctors and still despise being told I need a prescription. I've never felt I got anything useful out of the visits; but perhaps that's because most doctors I've seen are rather narrow minded.

I know doctors like Anastasia are changing some of that, and it's too bad there aren't more like her around. Things might be different.

Anstastia hit the nail on the head and put it through the lumber; I've seen friends and family in that vicious cycle and I've told them for years. It's almost disappointing when you tell them to get another opinion and it falls on deaf ears because someone had a Ph. D.

This is so sadly true. I believe the “magic pill” syndrome is based on a pathetic modern trend: the lack of ability or desire to take responsibility for one’s health, and the tranquilizing notion that serious men in white coats, infallible geniuses devoid of conflicts of interest, will take care of one instead.

A single example from my own life will suffice.

One person close to me, obese for many years, was found to have thyroid cysts. This person is well aware of the fact that I cured my own weight problems, along with innumerable health complaints, by embracing paleo and rejecting the mainstream medical establishment and all its works. Yet when doctors recommended surgical removal of the thyroid, this person thought that was a swell idea.

I broached the subject as gently as I could. “The thyroid is a pretty important organ. Rather than undergoing an irreversible surgery, why not take three months to eat right and exercise, like you know you should? You can always get the surgery after that if you don’t like the results.”

“Well, maybe if I was younger and more energetic,” came the (paraphrased) reply. “But now I just want the problem taken care of. They’ll give me prescriptions to replace the thyroid hormones. So-and-so had the same surgery, you know.”

So there was nothing else I could do but wish the person well, and they went ahead and had the surgery. By a typical oversight, thyroid replacement drugs were not prescribed until weeks afterward, and complications ensued. To this day the dosage is irregularly monitored. It grieves me to say that this person who used to have a reasonable amount of energy is now largely confined to a chair, and the situation continues to worsen.

Will you take responsibility for your own health? Or will you let natural selection take care of that for you? We may be able to delay the choice, but we cannot avoid it in the end.

The first issue is what is the range of normal human biochemical variation (how unique a snowflake you are) and to what degree diet can or should be optimized for you personally.

The second issue is whether getting off SAD — Standard American Diet — is a good idea for the great majority of people regardless of their unique physiology.

As to the first question, it seems clear to me that the range of variation is *wide*. Are you going to claim that no one will do fine (that is, lead a long a healthy life) on a high-carb diet with lots of grain? Go look at Asia.

I would argue that humans are sufficiently different so that personalized food habits are important and necessary. This is just a part of the basic “Know Yourself” approach. Generic advice is generic — even if it’s good for the majority of the population, how do you know you’re not in the minority?

Health, individual health *is* complex. That’s the underlying reality. Pretending it’s simple — once we’re out of the “don’t eat poison” territory — is likely to lead to bad results.

Appreciate the time you put into each article AND the time spent responding to us in the comments section.

It seems as blogs/websites get more popular, the work-load increases, and typically that blogger will post/comment less and less (understandably so because blogging isn’t that person’s #1 priority). BUT, yours is one of the few that when a post comes up its always a good read.

So, here’s hoping you don’t get overwhelmed by the increasing traffic.

I invite you any time to Nashville to she you Neolithic disease up close and personal from pitied and within. When you ride knee deep in Neolithic diseases you will be reintroduced to the term context. When we re engineer humans back to an evolutionary lifestyle we need every tool in our armentarium. I don’t sell it or profit from it. They come for what I know. They want their bodies and minds back. In my clinic…….100% primal is often putting lipstick on am pig. The invitation stands. I will show you what we are really up against. I bet that blog will be popular.

The first issue is what is the range of normal human biochemical variation (how unique a snowflake you are) and to what degree diet can or should be optimized for you personally.

The second issue is whether getting off SAD — Standard American Diet — is a good idea for the great majority of people regardless of their unique physiology.

As to the first question, it seems clear to me that the range of variation is *wide*. Are you going to claim that no one will do fine (that is, lead a long a healthy life) on a high-carb diet with lots of grain? Go look at Asia.

I would argue that humans are sufficiently different so that personalized food habits are important and necessary. This is just a part of the basic “Know Yourself” approach. Generic advice is generic — even if it's good for the majority of the population, how do you know you're not in the minority?

Health, individual health *is* complex. That's the underlying reality. Pretending it's simple — once we're out of the “don't eat poison” territory — is likely to lead to bad results.

Kaa

Hi Kaa, I'm not sure I agree with your first point here. Human health and fitness is NOT balanced on a pin head. We are adaptive and as such health and fitness is arguably a moving target.. There is no optimal diet (or exercise); we live in a dynamic environment and have evolved as such. As with all systems, we need to be aware of the parameters we are adapted for. Push us outside of these parameters and the consequences become less predictable.

(An aside to this point; a friend of a friend has two young children, one of whom is obese and another who is lean but with severe tooth decay. Assuming the parent feeds the children the same foods – and broadly the same portion sizes, and also assuming that parental supervision during toothbrushing is also evenly distributed, modern medicine has diagnosed that one of these children eats too much and exercises too little, whilst the other manages to balance calories in and calories out but has a genetic defect with regard to tooth quality.

There has been absolutely no suggestion that obesity and tooth decay might actually be a consequnce of the same underlying dietary factor which manifests in different ways. I have to ask you, is such a proposition so far fetched? Heres the thing; the doctor makes two diagnoses that treat symptoms rather than looking at a potential singular underlying cause.

So it is that medicine and nutrition have become stratified, stove-piped and segmented to the point of impotence.)

For sure Asians can thrive on a high-carb diet with lots of grain (whilst living in Asia), but what about an Asian that has lived in the US for most of his/her early life? Does your idea hold true then?

I’ve lost 116lbs, sorted PCOS, Insulin Resistance, Migrains, heartburn and to a great extent athritus, I have energy, and I can walk again.

I find it a wonder that when you tell someone that bread, rice, pasta and potatoes need to be eliminated to a great extent to get these results people claim its ‘rubbish’ and will always have a reason to justify why they are right. Yet I am proof.

How many people would rather take pills then give up bread, just because they are so mindwashed into believing that less fat = less weight, if it worked why are we sliding into obesity, why is diabetes on the rise?

Yet, I’m living proof it works. What more do you need? I have friends who yo-yo diet and are getting fatter each year. I am getting thinner and healthier,,I no longer need drugs from my dr.

Look at yourself, modern diets and nutrition are not working. Give it up, and see what happens. You might be surprised.

I was skeptical of paleo/LC at first. I didn’t have JulieGeorgiana as an existence proof, but even if I did that would only have one data point. It takes a lot of evidence to overcome the conventional wisdom. For 50+ years I’ve been subjected to the “artery-clogging saturated fat” and “heart-healthy whole grain” messages on an almost daily basis. It seemed inconceivable to me that there wasn’t a preponderance of evidence behind them. Thanks to the persistence of J and others I finally came around.

I’m not sure I agree with your first point here. Human health and fitness is NOT balanced on a pin head. We are adaptive and as such health and fitness is arguably a moving target.. There is no optimal diet (or exercise); we live in a dynamic environment and have evolved as such.

I must not have been sufficiently clear. I am NOT saying the optimal diet is a very narrow island, one step away from it and you’re doomed. I am also NOT saying that the optimal diet, even for a particular individual, is fixed — clearly, what’s optimal changes in response to a variety of parameters. Age is one of the most obvious ones.

What I AM saying is that there’s very little dietary advice that is guaranteed to benefit 100% of the human population. Humans are *different*. Humans are very adapatable and have adapted to different environments which again means they are different and may need to eat different things.

I just really don’t like the one-size-fits-all approach.

For sure Asians can thrive on a high-carb diet with lots of grain (whilst living in Asia), but what about an Asian that has lived in the US for most of his/her early life? Does your idea hold true then?

shrug. Which idea? My ideas are that humans are different and complex. I believe they hold true Are you asking whether Asian genes will be able to overcome the environment? I don’t know. It depends. My point is precisely that it depends

The snowflake analogy has always made me laugh. Sure, they're all unique: but at any distance, they're all just a homogenous white mass.

Jason:

Unfortunately I can't imagine any education they'd receive would be anything but “eat more whole grains”. We may actually be in a better situation right now because they've been taught so little that there isn't years of training to be overcome.

Actually it would be fun to design a “nutrition for doctors” course based on ACTUAL BIOCHEMISTRY, instead of dubious epidemiology. That might get us there.

Great to hear from you again!

lynn:

I'm glad you've found a doctor with an open mind. Minds are changed one at a time.

Dave Sill:

I'll work on it…keeping all the social bookmarking stuff up to date is a PITA. Sociable hasn't been updated in quite a while, and I find most of the alternatives intrusive…

Paul:

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Anastasia:

I see that all the time: pills to counteract the side effects of pills…and with each new drug, the number of possible bad interactions increases geometrically.

And it usually takes decades to develop metabolic syndrome, so nothing is going to cure it in a week.

Asclepius:

Why eat food when you can eat birdseed and buy pills?

It's amazing that no one seems to make the connection that our bodies need all these vitamins because they're supposed to be in food! And if what we're eating requires us to take vitamins, or dump vitamins into it (“fortification”), maybe we're not eating the right food!

Sheesh.

Paul:

My advice fits within functional paleo community standards — but it's a new presentation of the evidence, from a fresh point of view that resonates deeply within many of us. I'm glad you find it inspiring.

It is important to remember that the way we feel when eating like a predator is how humans are supposed to feel. The jumpy, hungry, distractable, insomniac haze most of us live in is what happens when humans try to live on a diet of birdseed and diesel fuel.

Mike:

Sad but true. See Anastasia's post for a sobering reminder of how little nutrition training doctors actually receive:

It's tough to watch, but you can't help anyone who doesn't want help: see last week's article. I wonder what rationale was given for excluding fruit?

Chris:

I try not to put too much blame on doctors: they've got perhaps a few minutes to look at your chart, ask you questions, and figure out which of a million things could be going wrong. What we need to do is make that situation clear to everyone: you are responsible for your own health.

Timothy:

You're correct. A doctor isn't like a mechanic, where you can just bring your body in
and say “It's making weird noises and pulls to the left, fix it and
give me a rental until it's done.”

But we're continually told that we should never do anything without asking our doctor: we shouldn't eat new food, stop eating a food, take a vitamin, stop taking a vitamin, or even exercise without first “consulting a medical professional”. Passivity and compliance is encouraged at every turn.

How the hell is it that someone goes home from thyroid removal surgery without a bottle of Synthroid? That's pretty much criminal negligence IMO.

Some things certainly apply to all humans. We all need to breath oxygen and drink water to survive. Is diet really all that different?

As for looking at Asia, the Seven Countries Study showed that carbohydrate consumption in Japan decreased from 78 to 61 percent of calories from 1958 to 1989, while fat rose from 5 percent to 21, and protein from 11 to 16 percent. Basically, more meat, less rice.

During this same time, deaths from stroke dropped from 4.6 per thousand to 0.8, cancer rates dropped slightly from 4.7 to 3.4, and myocardial infarction rates remained about the same. While certainly not proof, it does suggest that Asians benefit from eating more meat and less rice.

“Eat Like A Predator” is about getting off the SAD (Standard American Diet) and onto healthy, nutrient-dense, evolutionarily appropriate foods.

While nutritional relativism is currently quite fashionable, the fact that certain diets (e.g. Japan, Kitava) are less toxic and evolutionarily discordant than the SAD doesn't make them the optimal human diet. Is lots of rice and a little bit of fish better than soda and deep-fried chicken? Yes. Is it better than bagels with fat-free “cream cheese”, 100 Calorie Snack Packs, and venti mocha-toffee frappucinos? Yes.

That being said, there is room for optimization once you're on the plan. Some people have allergies, intolerances, genetic defects, and variations in body chemistry….and, most importantly, differing tastes as a result of our sociocultural context. But there's no subset of humans with the desaturase enzymes to convert n-6 to n-3 fats, or turn 1kg of lean protein into glucose, or manufacture vitamin C de novo. We're less unique than we think.

Evan:

As gnolls.org becomes more and more widely read, it's getting tougher to respond to everyone. I'll do my best, but there will come a time when I just can't do it any more. I ask for your patience and understanding when that occurs.

Jack:

Oh, hell, Jack, you know I don't view functional paleo as a panacea: I view it as a necessary starting point.

I'm going to take you up on that offer someday, as I have occasional business in Nashville!

eddie:

Exactly.

Asclepius:

That's an excellent point, and part of what I was trying to get across. Many of what we call “diseases of civilization” are caused by the diet of civilization, and treating them solely with medication is like taping over the “Check Engine” light.

Franco:

Yes. That's part of what I said earlier: rice is better than bread as far as grains go. “Better” is not “optimal”.

JulieGeorgiana:

It's a lot easier to take a pill than to stop doing something we enjoy…even if it's killing us. And we're told every day, with millions of dollars worth of advertisements, that a pill will fix all our problems. Look! Retired people on a beach!

The irony is that I enjoy eating paleo more than I enjoyed eating junk, because it's more satisfying…I'm not left with an empty feeling an hour later.

Dave Sill:

Yes. It's disconcerting to realize that the entire current dietary dogma is based on 1) scientific fraud (Ancel Keys), 2) government policy written by vegetarians and based on scientific fraud (the McGovern committee), and 3) decades of purposely bad epidemiology twisted to support the fraud in order to stay funded.

I'm moderately contrarian by nature, and it still took me quite a while to get here. Hopefully I'm making it easier for others like yourself.

kaa:

“there’s very little dietary advice that is guaranteed to benefit 100% of the human population. Humans are *different*”

Yes, there is, and no, we're not.

We're not different enough for the optimal diet to have changed. Certain groups differ in their tolerance for suboptimal diets — but I'm not interested in what we can tolerate, I'm interested in what's best.

Chris:

I was surprised at the amount of vegetables, fruits, and milk…but then I remembered that chart is by weight, not by calories. I'd like to see it broken down by calories, which would be more honest as far as relative intakes.

While nutritional relativism is currently quite fashionable, the fact that certain diets (e.g. Japan, Kitava) are less toxic and evolutionarily discordant than the SAD doesn’t make them the optimal human diet. Is lots of rice and a little bit of fish … better than eating like a predator? No.

I think that’s the core of my disagreement. THE optimal diet? One and only? Got any evidence to support this assertion?

It’s obvious that there are wrong diets, ones that will kill you sooner rather than later. That necessarily means that there are good diets, ones that will help you stay healthy during a long life. But to claim that there is only one optimal diet and that optimal point is the same for all humans on planet Earth doesn’t sound reasonable to me.

I’m much more inclined to a theory that there are — to borrow an expression from one of paleo bloggers — islands of healthy eating in the sea of malnutrition. Not one, but multiple islands and not all of them work for all people.

If you want to eat optimally, you need to (1) stop eating junk (we agree here), but then (2) explore some islands and figure out which one works for you — works in terms of results, taste, practicalities. Different people will end up on different islands and that’s perfectly fine.

By the way, the Japan example is {rolls eyes}. The major change in their diet seems to be the increase in fat consumption of which, I bet, the great majority is vegetable oil (oh no, PUFAs!) and comparing mortality rates over 30 years without controlling for advances in medicine and availability of doctors/hospitals/drugs/etc. is quite meaningless.

I was surprised at the amount of vegetables, fruits, and milk…but then I remembered that chart is by weight, not by calories. I'd like to see it broken down by calories, which would be more honest as far as relative intakes.

Part III coming soon.

Agreed. But since vegetables are definitely not as calorically dense the chart would be ridiculously skewed towards wheat, and anything that is consumed in a liquid medium, in my opinion. Maybe I can find that information somewhere.

I'm not claiming there is a single set of optimal foods that everyone should be eating.But based on what we know about how the body processes nutrients, it's clear that there are ranges and proportions of each that result in optimum human health. The Jaminets' Perfect Health Diet spends a lot of time figuring out what these ranges and proportions are, and I highly recommend their book.

And since Paleolithic humans didn't have access to protein powders, refined oils, or refined flours and sugars, we can reverse-engineer a solid diet based on what proportions of real, whole foods can get us within those ranges, and based on the archaeological evidence we have.

That being said, there are “islands” of reasonably safe yet suboptimal nutrition — for instance, rigorous avoidance of gluten grains, refined oils (high in n-6 fats), and fructose appears to make high carbohydrate consumption much safer. But again, “better than the SAD” is not the same thing as “optimal”. The Japanese smoke much more than Americans, but no one recommends daily smoking as a healthy habit.

Chris:

It's easy to approximately reconstruct that with information from nutritiondata or fitday. And I don't think it skews our consumption towards wheat…wheat is a major constituent of our diet.

Anyone else notice how corn has mysteriously become reclassified as a “vegetable”?

You say that you enjoy eating paleo because it stops you feeling hungry. This came up last week in the comments too by another user. I have mentioned that being pregnant means upping my carbs as my blood sugar gets too low, and meat cooking is a horrid smell, so rarely eat it now, but I’ve been low energy, sick, had heartburn and had headaches. Thanks to your threads I suddenly realised I was missing fat, and needed to get it back into my diet.

So I did about 5 days ago, I started eating meat for dinner and try to add more eggs into my week. I thought my pregnancy was making me poorly, but it was too many (low gi) carbs and not enough meat and fat. And i’m eating less and feel much fuller. My headaches, most the heartburn and sickness have gone, and my energy is rising. My husband noticed I can do more the day after I eat a lot of meat. And as you said I’m more satisfied. And my cravings have calmed down a lot (caused by a lack of what my body needed).

So thanks to the gnolls I have to information I needed to make myself better. Keep the posts coming, I have more to learn

“We’re not different enough for the optimal diet to have changed. Certain groups differ in their tolerance for suboptimal diets — but I’m not interested in what we can tolerate, I’m interested in what’s best.”

JS, that paragraph of yours is another wonder of concision and clarity.
Just sayin’
Juan

Eggs are an incredible source of all sorts of critical nutrients, so I'm glad you're eating them. As you're pregnant, some DHA supplementation will be very helpful, both for the nutrition of your baby and to help avoid post-partum depression. You might consider 0.8-1g/day of DHA if you're not eating any fatty fish (and I know that methylmercury is an issue for the pregnant).

Note that most cheap fish oil is low in DHA compared to EPA…you may have to shop around to find good ones, or use something like Jarrow Max DHA to balance out the ratio. EPA is anti-inflammatory, but the DHA is more important because it's necessary for growing brains and bodies.

Juan:

Writing is communication, whether I'm writing a novel or responding to comments. I'm glad I'm able to get my meaning across to you.

Since changing my eating style, I can’t tell you how many times each day I sigh when I hear people talking about things like “needing” that sugary frappa-mocha-garbage each morning or seeing morbidly obese people eating bowls of “low-fat” pasta for lunch. They eat junk, have no energy, and because they have no energy it’s even easier to reach for more junk food. In contrast, I felt so alive this morning I sprinted until I was winded while walking to the grocery store to buy wholesome, predatory food. My neighbors no doubt thought I was nuts, but who cares!

I must say, of all the paleo/primal dietary instructions I’ve read, “Eat like a predator” is by far my favorite. It’s straight to the point and entertaining enough to make it memorable. If more people ditched the added sugar and “birdseed” (plus respective oils), they would be healthier and happier.

According to the Seven Countries Study, both Fat AND Protien consumption in Japan went up from 1958 to 1989. “Vegetable” oils are pure fat, while meat is fat and protien. Simply adding in oil wouldn’t account for the rise in protien. In fact, if oils were simply added, the percentage of protien would have gone DOWN. I believe the study even observed that meat consumption rose with incomes in Japan during the time.

Also, some vegetable oils didn’t even exist for the first 20 years of the study- Canola oil, for example, wasn’t even sold as a food until 1978. You seem to be speculating based on nothing.

All this remainds me the very first frase from Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” about happy and unhappy families.
So, there are many diseases but only one health.
JS, thank you for interesting reeding and discussion.

The “six pack problem” is way beyond the purview of a single comment. Furthermore, it's difficult to do without unnatural dietary modifications that are neither “paleo” nor healthy: see the classic article You, too, can't have a body like this.

That being said, the bodybuilders and weight-class athletes (e.g. powerlifters, MMA) have you covered on that score. Look into cyclical ketogenic diets like Jamie Lewis' Apex Predator Diet (warning: his site is extremely NSFW).

Paleo is quite simply about eating according to our evolutionary dietary principles – real food, made up of things we find and can catch in fields, streams, woods, the sea and open grassland. Meat, fish, shellfish, eggs and vegetables.

We do not live like our paleolithic ancestors, but if we try to imitate these simple dietary principles we stand in much greater stead of being able to live a healthy and productive life. Taking that and combining it with biochemistry, we see that this ancestral way of eating is quite simply proven to be right – our bodies like to thrive on eating like this.

People lose weight, people gain in strength and stamina, people reverse disease.

Question why you want to be as lean as possible. Yes, paleo eating can get you there – just eat protein and fat with as little carb as you can. Is it healthy? Should your body be like that? How might you survive a harsh winter without some fat around a strong body? It will wither fast as you dig into your hard earned muscles for life sustaining energy.

Paleo is a broad spectrum. Very active folks can eat more protein, more fat and more carb. Sedentary people like to err on a lower carb side of paleo, enjoying moderate protein and fat.

The best thing about paleo is that it puts you in touch with your body – you will find a level based on your activity and needs. It just happens, as if by magic, but there's not magic – it is natural. This is how we are supposed to live!

You're not going to find a “six-pack diet” that doesn't involve some amount of misery. Look up “cyclical ketogenic diet”, “Velocity Diet”, “protein-sparing modified fast”…or just suck it up and use Jamie's, which I already linked above.

Paul:

I tend to agree. Yes, there are a few men who sport a six-pack on any diet…just like there are a few women who have natural E cups. However, they're rare.

Rita:

The point is to eat in a way that allows us to reach our full potential as humans — strong, smart, and healthy. If you just want to get as lean as possible, see my reply above to kacper.

jason:

If you want to lean out:

-Go much higher on the protein and lower on the fat…i.e. leaner meats

-When you eat fat, make it coconut oil whenever possible

-More vegetables

-NO PEANUT BUTTER. It's incomplete protein and a whole bunch of omega-6. Peanut butter is not part of this diet! I suspect this is a big part of your problem right here. I'd ditch the other nuts, too, for similar reasons…most aren't as bad as peanuts, but they're calorie bombs and not all that nutritionally dense.

-NO SNACKING! You don't lose fat if you're constantly snacking. Either fix a meal or suck it up. And if you can't go between meals without snacking, either you didn't eat enough or you're still not fat-adapted.

-Go easy on the fruit, and only eat it as dessert — no between-meal fruit snacks

Let me know how this goes for you. Remember, there is also the possibility that (depending on what you ate before) your body is simply stocking up on nutrients it hasn't had for a long time.

i have been following your diet and i have seen good result in short amount of time i lost 2 kg in two weeks time but my main concern is that i lost muscle along with the fat. as i am athlete i want to retain my muscle and lose more body fat.

30% of my calorie comes from fat, 30% comes from carbohydrate and rest from protein.

If you're managing to lose muscle on a 40% protein diet, you're not eating enough food.

Paleo foods, being nutritious, are far more satiating (and sating), per calorie, than processed foods…so if you're eating to the same degree of satiation that you were before, you're very likely to be eating less food than you were before. (Total up your calorie intake on something like fitday if you're curious.) If you were weight-stable before, the likely result will be weight loss.

Furthermore, in reality, the main source of salt in our diet is prepackaged and processed foods (and restaurant entrees), which are usually full of salt that we don't even notice. If you're eating like a predator and preparing most of your own meals, you'll only be adding salt to dishes which actually need it, and your salt intake will very likely drop substantially.

Between these two facts, I don't worry about it one way or the other.

2. Eat fruit after your meal — it's dessert. In general, eat your protein first, then your veggies, then your starch. (Although it's fine to have them all mixed together…just don't start with the fruit or the starch.)

That being said, the occasional serving of dal can be delicious, and it certainly won't kill you…but meat, fish, and eggs are superior sources of protein, vegetables are superior sources of nutrients, and root vegetables are superior sources of starch.

Coconut oil or ghee? Either one is great! Paul prefers ghee, but several other people I know prefer coconut oil. I use both depending on my mood.

“As to the first question, it seems clear to me that the range of variation is *wide*. Are you going to claim that no one will do fine (that is, lead a long a healthy life) on a high-carb diet with lots of grain? Go look at Asia.”

Oxfam would dispute that billions of people eating little but rice have adapted and are doing nicely for it. Given a financial choice, all of these people would substitute higher-nutrition foods, including as much animal product as they can afford.

I would class that presupposition as an “extraordinary claim” that would require a lot of evidence across different countries, cultures, and economic classes.

Also it is important to keep in mind that regional diets vary a lot. There is no such thing as a monolithic “healthy Asian diet” except in the mind of someone ignorant of how Asians normally eat in various countries and regions.

Japan is a poor example of a typical Asian country in many ways. As it is wealthier, the population has much better access to a variety of quality food than other Asian countries.

But the traditional Japanese diet, which many revere and consider has spiritual properties, is boiled white rice, miso soup, and salty pickles, with fresh vegetables only in season and animal products only in tiny amounts. For decades the Japanese government has been trying to get the population to eat more like Okinawans, whose diet is heavy in animal products and vegetables, in order to reduce strokes and osteoporosis that generally have meant most elderly people are bedridden.

Good points. Also there is a difference between “we're skinny because we can't afford to be fat” and “our diet is healthy”. Japan after WWII was nearly a famine situation…anyone who's been there has noticed that the older people are, the shorter they are . Any population which is so hungry that its height has been stunted isn't the example to emulate.

[…] The answer to most of our health needs are through a natural diet, not in a packet of pills or packaged diet food. Whilst I’m not into the paleo diet per se, I do recommend you read this article: Better Health: it’s less complicated than you think! […]

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